CHAPTER XV
Indeed it was Mr. Omee whom the Company censured—Mr. Omee who had been inhuman enough to banish a worthless performance from his theatre. "Never," said Miss Jinman, "in all her experience had she known artists to be so grossly insulted." Mr. Quisby's position might be ambiguous, Mr. Quisby might be shirking his responsibilities; not to put too fine a point upon it, Mr. Quisby might be a rogue. But he had paid them compliments—and Mr. Omee had shut his doors against them. Mr. Omee was the innocent person whom they execrated and reviled.
In the quarter where the "professional apartments" of Blithepoint are most numerous, the landladies looked anxious in the morning. On every doorstep in Corporation Road, and half way down Alfreton Terrace, the news was known by nine o'clock. The lodgers were obliged to fence with searching questions at breakfast, and many of the houris heating curling-tongs in the parlour-fire were told that it would "save trouble if they got in their dinner themselves."
Towards midday the Company straggled off the pier with baskets and parcels, and the baggageman was busy collecting the clothes-hampers. The boards of Little Miss Kiss-and-Tell had gone from the turnstiles, and later, bill-stickers came along and splashed up advertisements of a stopgap. The rejected comedians stood on the Parade and eyed the work morosely. They had hoped the theatre would have to be closed. Miss Jinman said, "It was very strange, to say the least; she didn't understand how the bills had been printed since last night! It looked to her as if Mr. Omee had been playing them false from the start!"
Then striking proof of Mr. Omee's perfidy was forthcoming, his brutal nature was revealed to the full—he offered to make the stranded performers by whom he had lost money, a present of their fares if they liked to return to their homes. "Ah," said the Chorus, "that shows what a dirty trick he served us!" "He has exposed his hand there," said Miss Jinman; "wants to get us out of the town!"
And Mr. Quisby, who meant to pay them nothing, but was endeavouring to make use of them in Slocombe-on-the-Swamp the following week before he decamped, told them there was a reviving prospect of a three months' tour.
So not more than a third of the Company profited by Mr. Omee's generosity, and the others warned them that they were being very unwise.
And by this time the tidings of the disaster had spread from Corporation Road and Alfreton Terrace as far as the Grand Hotel, where it provided languid amusement, and the plight of the players was known to all the visitors on the Front. Including Conrad.
But it was not until Friday, December 26th, that one of those incidents which may occur to anybody associated him with the matter.